Archive for July 2012

This is not to betray my gender nor to agree with the radical feminists that all men are chauvinist pigs. However…! Look, fellas, one of us has to admit it publicly. We’ve screwed up. From the very first tribal chieftains to jungle shamans to Machiavellian princes to Hugh Hefner and Dubya Bush strutting their libidos,... Read more »

Here’s a guess. You too may have reached that point in life when you not only read the obits, you muse about what yours might look like. By the way, this is not just an old person’s reflection, for I’ve known people who’ve already thought about it in their 20’s and 30’s. Lets call it:... Read more »

Every news report has the essentials: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Now ask yourself where are your favorite Where’s in this world….? Answers range from sweeping mountaintops and seashores to secret cubby holes and under your bed covers. All depends on what you’re looking for in that special Where. I’ll tell you mine in... Read more »

Bill Clinton put it well: “The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change…” With that in mind, consider some of the epic changes that could be underway: * Now that the wars on drugs have cost so much with so little success, society may be recalling the... Read more »

America cheerfully lives with a great many classics. There’s our love of freedom towering in the Statue of Liberty, our passion for individualism riding the range in the Old West, our zeal for success reflected in our great glass cities. But no American classic is more iconic than the “girl next door.” The fresh-scrubbed, all-American... Read more »

London security forces were on high alert at the Games. Only they missed the ticking time bomb left behind. In addition to the luminous pyrotechnics was the lurking challenge to the West: Will you continue to dominate the world or will China? No one announced it exactly that way, but it seems clear by the... Read more »

You are terrific writers and consummate defenders of modern motherhood. Still, I have a generational bone to pick with you. And your many readers…! It’s perhaps chronologically inevitable that I at 81 would see you as a little out of touch with the “big picture.” However, right now that picture is being featured in a... Read more »

Everyone knows the epic war between man and woman. Started with that first bitten apple. But a close second is the equally epic war between youth and age. That one started the first time a son beat his father. Each has been raging ever since, a perennial subject for psychologists and poets alike. Our latest... Read more »

The networks have secretly promised sponsors their biggest advertising payoff in years. How? Watch the August announcements; 80% of all programming will arrive in four sure-fire categories. (1) Reality (2) Cops (3) Docs (4) Weird. But as diverse as these sound, there is one mesmerizing reward hidden in each: America’s long lost feeling of absolutes!... Read more »

Hundreds of millions will be watching the London Olympics. Yet even more hundreds of millions will not. I wondered why, so I asked some of them. They made a lot of sense…! We are told the games are a noble statement about humanity’s pure pursuit-of-excellence and lofty border-less camaraderie. As to the camaraderie, there is... Read more »

Meet The Blogger

Jack Spatafora

40 years educator/writer/intellectual vagabond...speech writer for the White House and Fortune 500 CEOs...regular contributor to the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Pioneer Press, New World...teleplays and documentaries on PBS, ABC and NBC... 50-year colleague of Bob Newhart and 60 year spouse of Chicago actress Joan Spatafora...who is by far prettier than Bob!